Technical design

One of the questions that the team developing proposals for the hydro project has had to answer is: How many Archimedean turbines should we install on Caversham weir?

Similar schemes in Oxford and Mapledurham have one turbine. At Windsor the Queen has four. Although consideration was given to having four turbines in Reading, it was decided to go for two as there isn’t sufficient flow all of the time to make four economically viable. To ensure that our scheme works our consultant has recommended that we go for two screw turbines which will generate around 50kW. As these will be generating a good proportion of the time they will give us a good financial return.